


It Never Comes By Post

by nah_tho



Series: Dumb Interspecies Relations [3]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: 69 (Sex Position), Anal Sex, But that's not news, Dirty Talk, Healthy polyam, Lup is a troll, Luthic the orcish fuckgoddess lmao, M/M, Orc Culture, Polyamory, Relationship Growth, Size Difference, Size Kink, because you just know Taako has a filthy mouth, criminal misuse of d&d canon, godly fuckery, moon elf taako, rough sex to a degree
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 07:57:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12860199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nah_tho/pseuds/nah_tho
Summary: Taako's not very reasonable. Lup's greatest delight in life is griefing her brother. Kravitz minds his own business. Barry is a good dude.Brad has a religious experience.





	It Never Comes By Post

**Author's Note:**

> You'll never guess who's back.
> 
> No, you haven't guessed it.
> 
> Even as I pour the contents of my hands onto the floor in front of you, unblinking, the mystery remains.

_Later:_

When Lucretia approached him early that evening, he expected her to say something, but he didn’t expect her to open that something with,

“Brad, can I ask a favour of you?”

It took him a moment to process. “Of course,” he answered. “What can I do for you, Madam Director?”

She handed him a parcel a bit wider than his palm. “As I’m sure you can imagine, I am not entirely in Taako’s good graces at the moment,” she said. “I need to return this to him, but he won’t respond to my calls, and I am not at leisure to deliver it to him personally.”

Brad took it, but not without some doubts. “Madam Director, I’m not sure he’d be happy to see me-”

She raised a hand to stop him. “If Taako were upset with you, you’d know,” she said. “He ignores me because we’ve known each other far too long for him to indulge himself in pettiness, but the same courtesy would not be extended to you.”

He had to admit the validity of that statement. “Gloria’s still on the base,” he pointed out, instead.

Lucretia quirked a brow at him. “If you’re referring to the courier, I believe she’s… preoccupied by one of your co-workers to a degree that makes me worry about my package ever making it to its destination,” she said wryly.

Brad smiled. “I see your point.”

“If you don’t want to-”

He waved her off. “It’s fine,” he murmured, examining the writing on the package in his hands, “I was going to say I had some concerns about respecting Taako’s right to privacy, but…”

“Oh no, as far as I’m concerned, he has forfeited that right with you,” she said, and with such obvious dryness that he couldn’t help but laugh.

***

Avi broke into a big grin when Brad showed him the destination written on the package.

“Wait,” he said, “are you friends with Kravitz?”

Brad looked at him, puzzled. “Sorry, I’m not familiar with that name.”

The smile faded a little. Avi’s eyebrows began to creep upwards. “I just… Kravitz seems more of a ‘your speed’ kinda guy than Taako, so I thought… well, you’ll probably get along great. He’ll stop Taako from bullying you too bad, anyway,” he said, shrugging. “You been to their place before?”

Brad shook his head. “Never.”

Avi’s grin returned in full force. “Tell me what you think when you get back, okay?”

He was still grinning when Brad’s sphere left the hangar.

***

Brad understood.

Taako’s home was unusual, to say the least.

Even in a place like Goldcliff, it would’ve been unusual. In a highly industrial, modernized city like Neverwinter, it was a dissonant eyesore.

If he’d had to put words to the impression it left on him, something that went a little further than things like _neo-baroque_ or _gratuitously expensive_ , he would’ve settled on the slightly more esoteric _evidence of unwanted homage_.

The flowing architecture and myriad detailing was opulent in a way that was unmistakably Taako’s style, as was the jarring presence of an enormous fountain bisecting the walkway, but the luxuriously reclining marble skeletons in the centerpiece of the fountain and over the arched doorway beyond had a particular flavour Brad decided probably wasn’t this mysterious Kravitz’ style, but rather, Taako’s interpretation of it.

He lingered in front of the door longer than he had to, considering the rubies set into the eye sockets of the pewter door knocker. The ring that hung from its skeletal jaws was surprisingly heavy, even for him, and impacted the wooden door with far more force than he thought necessary.

The person who answered it was a tall, dark-skinned human man in a sharp black suit. He was very handsome, Brad noticed. He also looked absolutely bewildered.

“Um, sorry, that knocker’s not actually supposed to-” he said to Brad’s chin, and then faltered, his eyes migrating upwards. “Oh.”

“Hi, I’m-” Brad started.

“Brad, right?” the handsome man finished. “Brad Bradson?”

“The very same,” Brad confirmed cheerfully. “Are you Kravitz?”

“I am,” Kravitz answered. “What can I do for you, Brad? Taako didn’t tell me you were coming.” Brad realized he could hear the murmur of voices from somewhere further in. Someone laughed. It was a high, sharp laugh, like Taako’s, but not.

“He didn’t know,” Brad said, and then realized how that sounded. “The Director sent me.” He raised the package in his hand in explanation.

Kravitz eyed it and then looked back up at him. “Would you like to come in?” he asked, almost at the same time as a familiar voice said,

“Krav, close the door on the Fantasy Home and Gardens magazine salesman and come taste this sauce already-”

“Taako,” Brad greeted as his eyes popped up over Kravitz’ shoulder.

“Oh shit,” Taako said in answer, and then whipped his head around to look at something behind him. His ears were folded straight back. “Krav meet Bradson, Bradson meet Krav, okay everybody outside, it’s a great day for not being inside anymore-”

“Taako, what’s the hold up? If it’s interesting, I want in.”

Her voice sounded a lot like Taako’s, Brad noticed. She also looked eerily like Taako, from what he could see of her. The part of his mind that had been inundated with memories of the Starblaster’s hundred-year journey recognized her immediately.

“You’re Lup,” he said, as another pair of luminous green eyes with silvery lashes appeared, peeking past Taako over Kravitz’ shoulder. They hit him at chest level first, and then rose, as Kravitz’ had, until they met his gaze.

She retreated enough for him to see her face break out into an unsettlingly familiar shit-eating grin. “Oooh? What’s this, Taako?” she lilted. Taako pressed his face into Kravitz’ shoulder with a loud groan. “You must be _Brad_. Please, come in, we were just about to have dinner.”

He looked at Kravitz, a little lost. “I don’t want to intrude-”

“So don’t,” Taako said, voice muffled by Kravitz’ suit, before Lup put him into a headlock.

“I’m the elder twin and I say _please do_ ,” she said, grinning wickedly, “in fact, I insist.”

Taako squawked and the two of them went careening off into the main hall, squabbling. Brad looked at Kravitz again.

Kravitz shrugged at him. “It’s up to you,” he said, apparently unsurprised by the way his evening was going. “Though if you’re going to go, I’d go fast.”

Brad thought about the circumstances under which anyone would enter a building after a warning like that.

“Thank you for having me,” he said finally, and Kravitz moved to let him in, shooting him an appraising smile.

***

He knew the stout, bespectacled human man calmly setting the table in the middle of the chaos that was the combination kitchen and dining room the same way he’d known Lup: it eked out of his brain like an old memory.

Barry Bluejeans did not look like a person who had lived a harrowing existence running from a universe-ending entity, or like a person who would make the choice to become a lich, or like a person who would have anything to do with the sibling showdown happening behind him, and yet, there he was.

“Lup, please don’t break anything,” he said without turning as she and Taako went tumbling to the floor, continuing to place cutlery around the edges of the placemats with an air of slow, unpractised focus.

“I gotchu, Bear,” she called, and then yelped. “You punched me in the _boob_ -”

Brad took in the situation and the glass and iron table it was happening behind with a mind that had decided not knowing what to think meant it was better not to think at all.

“Um. So we have an extra guest,” Kravitz was saying.

“I’ll set another place,” Barry said easily, and then glanced up at him.

There was a long moment where they both just looked at each other, and then Barry said,

“You’re not a half-orc,”

with a degree of surprised conviction that indicated to Brad that while everyone present seemed to be aware of his existence, there had been some confusion about the details therein.

“I’m not, no,” Brad confirmed.

Taako’s hand slapped up onto the table beside him. “Uhh, Barry,” he said from somewhere near the floor, “I never said he was. Also: _rude_. Lup, get off-”

Lup scrambled up, using Taako’s head as a grip. “Okay but I’m with you on this one, Bear,” she said, clinging to Barry as Taako tried to yank her back down. “When someone says they’re boning an orc, you don’t, like, think they’re actually boning an _orc_ ,” she said. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Brad answered easily.

“Okay, but how does that _work?_ ” she blurted, and with such urgency that Brad knew it was a question she’d wanted to ask from the moment she’d seen him. He laughed, despite himself. “You… are the one who’s been fucking my brother, right?”

He looked at the top of Taako’s head, unsure if he was supposed to answer that.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Lup said, and then screamed as her footing gave way to a particularly hard yank.

Brad looked between Kravitz and Barry uncertainly. “I’m just here to deliver a package,” he pointed out.

“I’m sure you deliver your package spectacularly!” Lup yelled from the floor, and then laughed as Taako shrieked in indignation.

***

“So what do you do, Brad?” Barry asked politely, resolutely ignoring Lup using Mage Hand to steal from Taako’s plate as revenge for transmuting her utensils into smoked ham.

“I work for the HR department at the Bureau of Benevolence,” he answered. “My job is mostly interdepartmental mediation.”

“That sounds very interesting,” Barry said, and he was gratified to see he seemed to mean it. “After spending a hundred years together on the Starblaster, I think we can all agree that having someone to… ease the tension sometimes is important,” he commented. “Lucretia was that for us. No matter how much you love each other, things can get a little explosive if you’re stuck in close quarters for too long, y’know?”

Brad inclined his head in acknowledgement. “The Director personally oversaw my training,” he agreed. “She’s very capable.”

“Capable of some fuckery, too, am I right?” Taako interjected, and then yelped as Lup slapped him upside the head with her Mage Hand. Brad saw Kravitz, who was seated to his left, quickly move his wine glass out of the way.

Brad shifted, trying to get comfortable in the too-small chair. His knees kept bumping the underside of the table.

“Any hobbies?” Barry prompted again, clearly trying to keep the atmosphere light and comfortable.

“Well, I do a bit of home brewing,” he began, and Kravitz hummed thoughtfully, setting down his glass.

“Taako mentioned that- I’m more of a wine man, myself, but I’d love to try your beer sometime,” he said.

“I’d be more than happy to share some with you,” Brad told him. “You’ll have to tell me what you think of it. But yes, I do a bit of brewing, I collect stamps, I like to read. Nothing outrageous.”

Lup started to say something that sounded like a lead in into a jibe about how there was something, or rather _someone,_ outrageous he liked to ‘do’, but Taako stomped on her foot before she could finish.

“Stamps?” Barry said, eyebrows rising. “What generation? When I was in my lich form, I spent a lot of time studying the postal system here. I was kind of hoping I might be able to sneak something onto the base and undo what Lucretia had done to everyone’s memory, but, uh, obviously that never came to anything.” He smiled a bit ruefully.

“Everything from about a decade before the Relic Wars to now,” Brad said eagerly. “The things that have come to light since the Day have been very interesting- there were a lot of mysteries in the field that are only coming together now-”

Barry laughed. “I can imagine! If you knew the trouble I’d had tracking shipping routes-whenever one of them was interrupted by a disaster caused by the Grand Relics, everyone would forget that part of the route existed, and everything would change-”

“-which is why the route between Marsember and Eversult involved fording the Lake of Dragons for about six months before people realized they could go past the ruins of Proskur-” Brad finished excitedly.

“Yeah, exactly! It was a nightmare to keep up with- at first I thought she was doing it on purpose, and had somehow caught on to what I was trying to do-”

“What is this _nerd talk_ at my table, my dudes?” Taako interrupted loudly. Brad suddenly realized that he and Lup had been quiet for a while.

Lup was treating her brother to a world-class shit-eating grin. Taako was steadfastly ignoring her. Kravitz was hiding a laugh by pretending to cough into his napkin.

“Bear,” Lup said before anyone else could respond, “sorry to interrupt, babe, but remind me what Taako said in his speech at our wedding? Something about how he was happy for us but glad he hadn’t gotten my taste in… what was it, Taako?”

Taako flushed immediately and pressed his lips into a fine line, sliding down in his chair.

“Um, ‘huge nerds’ was what I believe he said,” Barry offered, and then turned his attention to his food in a way that Brad understood as excusing himself from any further involvement in this conversation.

“That’s right!” Lup crooned, feigning surprise. “So what was that about not sharing my ‘taste in huge nerds’, hm, Taako?”

She was leaning over the table, still grinning. Taako had slid so far down in his seat he could’ve slipped under the table to hide if he’d felt like it.

“…Shut up,” he muttered petulantly, and Lup laughed at him.

“Oh _no_ , brother of mine, after the shit you gave me for ‘hooking up with the goofiest loser on the Starblaster’, you fucking know you’re still going to be hearing about this one when I come to reap your gay, nerd-loving ass,” Lup purred, chin in hand. “Oh, and Taako? Since you seem to have taken the ‘huge’ in ‘huge nerd’ kind of literally, I guess,” she added, gesturing towards Brad with a delicate blue hand, “I’m gonna ask that you warn me if you fucking _die_ because of it.” She glanced between them and furrowed her eyebrows. “Okay, but seriously, how does that even _work?_ ”

“You are _my sister_ ,” Taako shrieked. “I don’t ask you about the nasty shit you get up to with Barry! What the hell is wrong with you?”

Lup slapped the table urgently. It was such a disconcertingly familiar mannerism that Brad was momentarily distracted from the point in the conversation he’d found himself hopelessly stuck on. “I am married to a scientist,” Lup countered, tapping the table with her palm. “Science needs to know, Taako-”

At the same time as Taako was wailing,

“I’m in _hell_ ,”

Brad cut in with an absentminded,

“we have to be very careful,” followed by what he actually wanted to ask, which was, “are you… a reaper of souls?”

The conversation petered out. Everyone was looking at him.

Taako shrugged. “Uh, yeah- I guess I mentioned about Krav but not Lup or Barry, huh?”

Brad just sort of looked at him. “Oh,” he said. “So all three of you are reapers.” Barry and Lup exchanged glances. Kravitz seemed strangely curious, judging by the way he was studying him, but said nothing.

Taako was starting to give him a bit of a weird look. “Yes?” he said. He sounded confused and a bit annoyed. “Come on, my man, you and like, everybody fucking else knows that Lup and Barry are liches- did you think my reaper boyfriend was just gonna casually chill with my lich sis and her nerd lich husband and not make a big deal about it?”

Brad thought about lying. As with most things in his life, he decided it wasn’t worth the effort. “I thought you were joking about your boyfriend being the grim reaper,” he admitted.

Kravitz’ curious expression was starting to evolve into something a lot closer to amusement. Brad saw him stifle a laugh into his wineglass.

Taako had his hands raised in the universal gesture of _what the fuck is wrong with you, I don’t understand_.

“I lived on a spaceship for a hundred years, _Brad_ ,” Taako shot, putting a particularly obnoxious and nasal emphasis on his name, “and you know that because of some fucking weirdo space jellyfish freeloader we picked up, _Brad_ ,” and by this point Brad was trying not to laugh at this sheer absurdity of the situation, “so what exactly, my man, what exactly in my life makes you think I would be joking about boning down on death?”

He was just about able to compose himself enough to speak when Lup piped in with an eye roll and a joking,

“Yeah, _Brad_ ,”

that was such a flawless imitation of Taako he found himself collapsing into helpless laughter.

***

“I should probably say goodnight,” Brad told Taako politely once he realized that Lup’s _‘time to go to hell, boss lady is waiting’_ jokes were a literal indication that three-quarters of the original dinner party was leaving for work.

He was suddenly very aware of his position as an intruder in Taako’s home.

Taako gave him a weird, slightly inscrutable look. “It’s been maybe an _hour_ ,” he said, and then squinted. “And aren’t orcs nocturnal? So it’s like… late morning for you.”

Brad found the question genuinely surprising. “I… didn’t think you knew that,” he admitted.

“He didn’t until, like, a week ago,” Lup called from the kitchen, and Taako scowled.

“Regardless, Taako,” Brad said gently, “while you and your family have been very kind-” Lup started laughing openly. Barry hushed her. “-I wasn’t invited, and I wouldn’t want to overstay my welcome. I just came here to deliver-” He paused. Taako was quirking a pale eyebrow at him. “-a lost item,” he ended firmly.

“Aw shit, you ruined my line,” Taako mumbled.

Brad looked at him.

“I was going to say you were welcome to stay and deliver that package after the nerds go to work,” he said slyly, peeking at Brad through his eyelashes.

Kravitz audibly snorted.

Lup popped her head out of the kitchen to make an ugly face at Taako. “Wait for me to _leave_ before you start hitting up your booty call,” she complained.

Taako’s finger whipped out to point at her. “Hmm? Sorry, who was asking me about how I get nasty with him earlier? It’s for _science_ , Lup-”

Barry puttered in and gently steered Lup back through the kitchen and out of sight with a nod at Taako and a,

“Was nice to meet you, Brad, have a good one.”

He had never heard reality tear before. It was an unfamiliar sound. He only knew what had happened by the sudden absence of murmuring.

When Brad looked back down, Taako was looking anywhere but at him and fidgeting with his hair, twisting it endlessly around his fingers.

“I will have to tell the Director that I’ll be delayed,” he pointed out.

The skin of Taako’s cheeks and nose immediately bloomed into that familiar, but never less beautiful, sunset of purples and lilacs. “She already fucking knows what’s up, who cares,” he muttered, feigning indifference.

Brad pulled his Stone out of his pocket, still watching Taako closely.

Taako glanced at his hand. His cheeks darkened further. “Get it over with, _cree-zus_ , you don’t need to build suspense-”

“Madam Director, I’m afraid I’ve run into some unexpected complications,” Brad said smoothly into his Stone, and Taako shut up. “It’s nothing to worry about, but I’m not sure when I’ll be back on the base.”

Her voice made it immediately clear that she hadn’t bought his excuse for even a fraction of a second.

 _“Oh, is that so, Brad?”_ She sounded very tired and very wry. _“How unfortunate. Say hello to Taako for me, will you? I’ll see you tomorrow.”_ The _click_ that followed felt very pointed.

He had never been hung up on by his employer before. It was an odd sensation.

He was still considering it when small hands snaked around his waist.

“Hi,” Taako said.

“Hi,” he answered, tucking the Stone back in his pocket. “Is there something I can do for you, Taako?”

Taako was fidgeting with the folds in his shirt with the same restless energy he’d been directing towards his own hair earlier. He shrugged a little stiffly. “Is there?”

Brad waited.

Taako glanced up at him and then away. He seemed shy, somehow.

“May I?” Brad ventured.

“Yeah,” Taako mumbled.

He was so soft under Brad’s fingers. Every part of him seemed to be. His sharp tongue seemed to suggest that he’d be all hard edges, yet there seemed to be nothing to him that was.

He’d marveled at it the first time, and he marveled again now.

Brad pushed his fingers into Taako’s hair, running his fingers up the edges of his ears, and Taako crowded closer into him.

“Oh yeah, never got that chance last time, huh?” he said, and Brad smiled.

“No, I didn’t.” They were faintly translucent, he noticed. He could see the late evening light from the windows shining through their edges.  “You jumped out the window,” he teased, and Taako pressed his face into the front of his shirt with a groan.

He felt around the base of them and Taako shivered. He pressed his fingers into the skin behind them and Taako melted bonelessly against him.

Brad chuckled. “Some things seem to be universal,” he commented, working small circles into Taako’s scalp.

“Mm?” Taako hummed.

Brad shrugged, working his fingers over the curve Taako’s skull. Even leaning his weight on him, Taako was such a slight yet solid presence, almost cool to the touch. It was a quiet, very still sort of moment, one where he wasn’t thinking very much at all.

He decided that was why what Taako said next took him so off-guard.

“Hey, are you really okay with this?”

He paused, puzzled. “What?”

Taako had drawn back from the front of his shirt a little, but was still looking there rather intently. “Are you really,” he asked again, “okay with this, my man? I mean, I know cha boy is a _babe_ , right, but I kinda sprung it on you-”

“I would’ve- of course I’m okay with this,” he told Taako, somewhat at a loss. Taako pressed his face back into his shirt. “What… brought this on?”

Taako shrugged again, but said nothing.

He could feel an odd sense of distance yawning between them: in the moment when he hadn’t been thinking much of anything, Taako had clearly been thinking a lot. It was a strange realization to have. “Why wouldn’t I be okay with this?” he tried again.

Taako shrugged again and tilted his face down so his forehead was pressed hard against Brad’s chest.

“Taako,” he prompted gently, unsure what to do with his hands now that the mood had changed so drastically.

“It’s not like you came here ‘cause you wanted to, my _dude_ ,” Taako said, so quiet that it took Brad a moment to parse what he’d said.

“Considering I didn’t know where you lived until an hour ago, that would’ve been difficult,” Brad pointed out.

Taako withdrew a little and shot him a sulky look. “Okay,” he muttered, “then it’s not like you called me to ask.”

Brad just sort of took him by the shoulders and looked at him.

He looked at him for long enough that Taako’s ears started to turn back and he snapped,

“What?”

“Sorry,” Brad said, very pleasant, very careful to be very pleasant, “I’d like you to remind me when you gave me your Stone’s attunement. Was it when you slipped into another plane of existence, leaving me naked in your quarters, or when you jumped out the window of my bedroom?”

Taako gaped at him. His earlier flush was starting to return. “I didn’t-”

“Taako,” Brad sighed, “not only do I have no way to contact you, you’ve given me no indication you would want me to. You’ve used magic to run away from me on _four separate occasions._ ”

“What? No, it was twice,” Taako shrieked. His ears had snapped upright in indignation. “When did I-”

Brad held up a finger. “One: the night of the Candlenights staff party.”

“…True,” Taako admitted.

He held up a second finger. “Two: the morning after, when I met you in front of the elevator.”

“True.” Taako’s ears were starting to wilt.

A third finger. “Three: after we slept together.”

“True.” His voice was barely a whisper.

A fourth finger. “Four: when you jumped out of my window.”

Taako said nothing to that, but his entire face had turned so profoundly purple that the high points of his cheeks and the tip of his nose were actually beginning to take on a reddish hue.

Brad looked at him, eyebrows raised. “What about that makes you think I thought you wanted to see or hear from me?”

“I’m really bad at this,” Taako mumbled, staring through the front of his shirt.

“I… I feel like I come to understand that more clearly every time I see you,” Brad told him frankly, and Taako covered his face with his hands. “And it doesn’t bother me, but I would appreciate it if you didn’t blame me for behaving in a way that-” A very troubling thought occurred to him. “Oh no. Oh, Taako. This isn’t how you’ve been…?”

Taako looked at him through his fingers. “Huh?”

“Taako, the only way I could’ve pursued anything with you under these circumstances is if I was stalking you,” he pointed out. “Is this how you’ve been- how did you even meet Kravitz-”

“Oh, he was trying to kill me,” Taako answered, faux-casual, dropping his hands to fidget with his hair.

Whatever expression it was that Brad made, it had quite the effect.

Taako burst out laughing, and continued to laugh so hard tears welled up in his eyes.

Brad was busy having a very lucid and strange epiphany:

He had realized, in that moment, that what he had been thinking of as an unusual, unnecessarily complex, and unpredictable series of encounters was, from Taako’s perspective, very probably the closest thing the elf had ever had to something genuinely mundane.

His perspective of reality shifted just _so_.

“Taako,” he said, squatting down so he wouldn’t be looming over him, and Taako’s giggling slowly subsided into a poorly concealed look of worry. “From what I know of you- which I will admit is not that much beyond what everyone knows- I enjoy being around you.” He paused and tilted his head in acknowledgement. “And I did enjoy sleeping with you.” Taako grinned at him, but it wasn’t the cocky, _of course you did_ grin he was clearly aiming for, just something a little shy and a little crooked. “If you’re amenable, I would like to see you again.”

“Amenable,” Taako parroted mockingly, but without any bite. “Who talks like that? Yeah, I’m down. Nerd.” A weird look crossed his face. “Are we still boning now, though?”

“Do you still want to?” Brad asked him.

“Well, yeah.” Taako said, apparently either handily recovered from his earlier bout of insecurity or concealing it quite well. “I might be like… two hundo and a bit with all the space travel and shit, but this business,” he said, gesturing broadly to his body, “is a hundred and thirty-seven and like… good to go _whenever_ , my dude. I got a solid sixty years of being down for whatever in front of me, of course I still want to.”

Brad tried to hasten his way through that particular revelation, but found himself stuck on one point. He’d always known Taako had to be at least a hundred, and he knew about the crew of the Starblaster’s hundred year journey, but-

“You’re two hundred and thirty-seven,” he mused, “which means you’re older than my entire clan. You predate my family’s bloodline. Alright. Okay. Hmm.”

Taako looked at him. “Older than your- what? Wait, how long do orcs live?” Taako squinted. “How old are you?”

Brad looked at him, opened his mouth to answer, and then thought better of it. He had the distinct feeling Taako wasn’t likely to take that particular information in stride. “May I?” he asked instead.

Taako gave him a bit of a Look but looped his arms around Brad’s neck invitingly. “Go for it.”

Brad pulled him down into a kiss, smoothing his hands down Taako’s arms and then slipping them around his middle to pull him close.

Taako melted into him eagerly. Brad felt his ponytail loosen and small, deft fingers slide over his scalp.

“Upstairs,” Taako murmured against his mouth.

Brad pulled back a little. “You’ll have to lead the way.”

They made their way in halting spurts as Taako stopped to press in close, distracted, or Brad snuck a kiss that grew into something more. He barely registered the layout of the house as he moved through it, just the flushed face in front of him and its green eyes and pale lashes and soft lips.

It was like being drunk, he thought later: that wind of tension and sudden giddy release leaving them both light-headed and intoxicated by the touch and sight and smell and sound of the other.

He’d remember the moment they hit the sheets, though: the way Taako looked against the supple grey fabric of the top sheet never left him.

“Gods, look at you,” he murmured, holding himself over Taako.

Taako gave him a sly smile, pushing his hands under the bottom of Brad’s sweater. “Right? How could I even think you didn’t want this ass, huh, my man?” he joked.

Brad kissed the swath of skin exposed above his collar, reveling in the small sound he made. “You’re enthusiastic, responsive, gorgeous,” he murmured, “and funny, sometimes,” he added drily, glancing up when Taako made a strangled sound, “so I agree: how could you think I didn’t?”

Taako covered his face. “Don’t look at me,” he mumbled. Brad snorted.

“I thought we established that was impossible for me,” he teased, and Taako reached out to shove his face away and rolled onto his stomach to hide in the sheets.

When Brad scraped his teeth over the back of Taako’s neck, the sound it provoked was unreal. Brad could feel him shivering under his hands.

“Taako,” he murmured, “may I?”

The shiver that went through Taako was electric. “Yuh-huh,” he mumbled, a bit muffled.

Brad slipped a hand up Taako’s skirt to give his ass a firm squeeze. It felt exactly as supple and round as he remembered. He noted with some curiosity that Taako did not seem to be wearing underwear, and thought that was a bit risky considering the wrestling he’d been doing with his sister earlier. He wondered, absently, if Taako had been wearing some at some point and had made a conscious choice to discreetly remove them.

He didn’t bother asking.

Taako squeaked. “ _Fuck_ , your hands are big,” he croaked, “like… you’re super big, my dude. I just can’t get over how big you are?” Brad was pretty it wasn’t supposed to be a question, but it certainly sounded like one.

“I’m not even that big for an orc,” Brad mused, laying down beside him on the bed, “You may just be tiny, Taako.”

Taako sent him a look from under his lashes. He was opening his mouth to argue as Brad pulled him flush against his chest.

“Pretty forward once you know what’s up, _huh?_ ” Taako said instead, half-laughing but a little breathless. He rolled obligingly to face Brad, pressing close. His hair was falling in his eyes.

“If you’d prefer to have complete control over how this goes, just say so,” Brad told him seriously, but Taako just gave him a weird smile and gestured dismissively before nuzzling up against his jaw.

Brad wasn’t sure he’d ever really get used to how small and soft Taako was. There was so much to him, so much personality and dynamism and power, that every single time he slipped into his arms Brad was taken aback again at how little space he took up.

He’d stroke or grip at Taako and whole bits of him would disappear into his palms, transforming into fleeting glances of dusty blue between his fingers, like the sky glimpsed through the canopy of a forest.

He’d fallen far enough into that formless, empty headspace again to not notice when Taako started getting restless, but he certainly noticed when Taako groped him.

Hand still shoved between them and cupping Brad’s crotch, Taako looked at him. “Hi.”

 “Hi,” Brad answered, “did you want something?”

Taako responded with a hopeful squeeze. “Eye on the prize, homie.”

He laughed a little at that. “Are you the prize here?”

Taako nipped playfully at his jaw and then gave him an imperious look that suffered a bit for how disheveled he looked. “My ass is the grand prize, my man, and you fucking know it.”

Brad snorted and kissed him, long and deep. Taako melted in his arms. His hand twitched lightly against the front of Brad’s pants as he moaned into his mouth.

“You’re wearing too many clothes,” Taako said the second Brad pulled back to breathe. “I’m wearing too many clothes,” he amended. “We’re wearing too much. This is a fucking mess.”

Brad chuckled and edged his arm out from under Taako’s side, stripping his sweater off and then working on his dress shirt. When he looked up, Taako was watching him intently, but didn’t seem to making any moves to remove his own.

“Do I have to undress you, too?” Brad asked him, amused.

Taako blinked, looked down at his loose-fitting tunic and skirt, and went,

“Oh,”

before rolling onto his knees and pulling his tunic over his head.

Brad’s fingers faltered on the buttons of his shirt.

He knew this only marked the third time he would see Taako naked, but he felt like it didn’t matter how many times he would: not matter how matter-of-fact or arrogant or clumsy he was about getting undressed, there was always something transfixing about him, about the small, soft rolls of his belly as he crouched, about the way his thighs and ass carried a little more of the plushness of his body than anything else, about the uneven patchwork of pale hair that trickled up from between his legs, about the way he seemed to believe he was the most beautiful creature to ever live.

About the way he was right.

Taako gave him another Look.

“Do I have to undress you, too?” he parroted mockingly, doing a not-unimpressive imitation of Brad’s voice.

Brad realized he’d stopped undoing his shirt altogether to watch.

“You’re beautiful,” he told Taako, popping those last few buttons open and unbuckling his belt.

Taako went a little purple, but seemed to be pretending he hadn’t. “That’s not news, Bradson,” he said dismissively, and finished pulling his skirt over his head.

Brad reached out and pulled him close again, marveling at the coolness of his skin.

“Cree _-zus_ , you’re warm,” Taako said, almost at the same time as Brad was thinking that particular thought. “You keep a furnace going under all that green beefcake, my man?”

He smiled and kissed Taako again instead of answering.

The first time had been incredible, but it had also been a rushed mess of lustful pawing at each other, and he’d had such a long night that he’d already been edging on exhaustion before they’d even started.

The second time had been an aborted, fumbling affair, unexpected but not unwelcome after the week he’d had, but he’d been even more exhausted then than during the first.

Now that he was rested, even fed, and away from prying eyes or unwanted interruptions, all he wanted to do was take his time to fully explore the body in his hands: what it could do, what sort of things it liked, what kind of noises it could make.

Taako, unfortunately, only seemed to have one setting.

With his arm shoved down the front of Brad’s pants and his cool palm sliding up the shaft of his erection, he looked Brad in the eye and grinned. “Hi.”

“You’re a very impatient person, aren’t you?” Brad asked him, a little exasperated.

“Taako knows what he likes,” Taako told him flippantly, withdrawing his hand to tug at the closure of Brad’s pants. “And, _hmm_ , right now he wants to see some orc dick. Get on it, my dude. Chop chop.” Taako’s chin was raised in challenge.

He wasn’t a mean-spirited orc by any means. He didn’t enjoy pain. He didn’t feel the same urge to test and conquer the people around him his father and sisters seemed driven by.

But he was still an orc.

He was very gentle when he took Taako’s hands by the wrists and pulled them over his head. He didn’t frown or snarl or snap at him. He made sure to smile disarmingly.

Taako looked puzzled. His eyes kept flickering from Brad’s hands to his face.

“You offered to help me undress?” Brad prodded, smiling.

“Uhh,” Taako started slowly, “okay-”

The first few tugs against his grip were light, noncommittal. He felt the moment Taako realized he wasn’t going to just let go.

He also saw it bloom across his face alongside his flush of embarrassment, a wash of conflict and confusion.

“Taako, I think you underestimate-” Brad started explaining apologetically, and then was interrupted by a soft, croaking,

“ _Hoo boy_ , kinda forgot about that one.”

He looked at Taako curiously. There was something a little familiar about his expression. “Pardon?”

Taako’s blush deepened. “You, uh,” he said, “can let go whenever? Or not. Cha boy’s pretty _good_ actually.”

Brad opened his mouth. Closed it. Sighed. “I can’t win with you, can I?” he murmured without heat, and let go of Taako to undo his pants.

“You can _only_ win with me,” Taako purred, pushing Brad’s shirt off his shoulders and chucking it somewhere behind him once Brad accommodated his efforts to remove it completely. “Let’s be real.”

Brad kissed him again, murmuring,

“Indulge me?”

before shifting off the edge of the bed to finish remove his pants and underwear.

When he looked back, Taako was watching him hungrily. “For that good-ass dick?” Taako said, catching his eye, “ _anything_. Mostly. No ass-to-mouth. I’m deffo scared what those teeth could do to this sweet rump, _natch_ , can’t hate on your boy Taako for that one.”

Brad laughed without really meaning to.

“That’s absolutely fair, actually,” he admitted, “There are a few things you have to take into consideration when you’re sleeping with an orc, and that certainly is one.” He ran a thumb along Taako’s jaw appreciatively.

Taako leaned into the touch, but still gave him a sidelong, slightly suspicious look. “Oh… _kay_? And? I’m not liking this suspense, my dude, just spit it out. What can cha boy do for you that isn’t get his ass shredded sitting on your dumb, perfect face?”

He ran his hands over Taako’s shoulders, feeling uncharacteristically self-conscious. “That wasn’t really what I had in mind when I was thinking about asking you to sit on my face, honestly,” he said carefully, and Taako’s eyebrows shot up so fast Brad felt like there should’ve been an accompanying sound effect.

“Well, _okay_ ,” Taako said, “so you were thinking a little less ass-to-mouth and a little more mouth-on-dick, huh? I can get behind that- well, you can get behind me, I guess,” he joked. The look he was giving Brad was narrow and difficult to read, as if he were considering something. “Counter-offer for your consideration, Brad Bradson,” he lilted teasingly, grin creeping into shit-eating territory, “how about we do each other a solid here, hmm? A little _quid pro quo_ vis-à-vis that face sitting you’re trying to sell me on? What do you say, my man?”

There was something so incredibly on-brand, so palpably Taako _(you know, from TV?),_ about the way Taako was behaving that Brad didn’t even have to hesitate before instantly coming to the conclusion that he wanted something very badly but was confident he could make Brad think he was doing him a favour by suggesting it.

“Alright,” Brad said slowly. “What is it you’re suggesting?”

“You see, Brad, cha boy was just thinking,” Taako told him, gestures and expression fraught with manufactured contemplation, “if I’m sitting on your face, where does that leave _me_ in this equation? What’s Taako doing while you’re working on that dick, huh? Just sitting there, getting a free ride on the Bradson Express?” The small, cool fingers of one blue hand were sliding flirtatiously down Brad’s chest. Brad glanced down at them and up at Taako’s faux-pensive face. “Now that doesn’t seem _fair_ , does it?”

Brad thought Taako wasn’t doing a very good job of following his own advice, re: telling Brad to “ _just spit it out”_ , but knew better than to point that out. “I suppose that’s one way to look at it,” he said diplomatically.

Taako treated him to the sort of winning smile a con artist might use on a particularly tough mark. “So here’s what _I’m_ thinking: while you’re down there, all up in my business,” he said suggestively, fingers trailing down and down until they made contact with his erection, “how about your boy up here on top gets down on yours, hmm? That sound good to you?” Brad shivered as Taako’s thumb teased a delicate line along the shaft of dick.

It did, in fact, sound very good to him. All the same, he couldn’t prevent a certain wryness from creeping into his voice. “You want to sixty-nine?” he asked.

“I mean, if you want to get real fucking _rude_ about it, sure,” Taako said, rolling his eyes. “So are you down or what?”

Brad cupped Taako’s cheek and leaned in. “Of course I am,” he murmured, and smiled when Taako shivered.

Taako gave him a look from under his lashes and then turned his head to run the tip of his tongue along Brad’s thumb suggestively before quirking an eyebrow and asking,

“So what the fuck are you waiting for, then, my man? I’m not gonna do a damn headstand just so you can get my dick in your mouth,”

which Brad really did suppose was fair.

He debated momentarily, and then decided in favour of lying down with his head on one of the pillows at the head of the bed, rather than flat against the mattress. He halted Taako’s approach to take a moment to remove his glasses and place them on the headboard, hopefully out of harm’s way.

Taako wasted no time firing quips or indulging in dramatic flourishes before turning around and positioning himself just above Brad’s shoulders. As Taako swung a leg over him, Brad supposed that spoke volumes for how enthusiastic he really was about the prospect of what they were about to do.

He felt Taako’s legs shift uncertainly. “Not really sure what my best _posish_ is gonna be here, vis-à-vis the face sitting thing,” he started, and Brad took that as a cue to take his hips in hand and guide them. Whatever Taako was about to say next disappeared into a weird, breathless yelp as Brad cupped his balls in one hand, lifting them out of the way, and pressed his mouth up against the underside of his dick.

“That works, I _guess_ ,” he said, and then moaned as Brad used his free hand to adjust the angle of his hips before guiding Taako’s erection into his mouth.

This was, he thought absently, and a little nonsensically, the one part of Taako that wasn’t soft, at least in his experience. It was a solid, velvety weight on his tongue. He pressed the flat of that tongue against it and sucked.

Brad palmed one of Taako’s ass cheeks appreciatively as the hips above him stuttered through an abortive little rutting motion.

“ _Shit_ , Brad,” Taako whined. His thighs were shaking. Brad felt fingernails dig into his thigh momentarily, then a hand on his dick, then warm breath above it.

Then Taako’s tongue.

When he moaned around Taako’s erection, he felt the wash of breath from Taako’s answering gasp and groan on his own.

He felt Taako’s lips stretch over the head of his dick, and realized his feet were unconsciously searching for purchase, for something to brace against so he could fuck up into that tight, hot, wet place, and forced his legs to relax, breathing heavily through his nose.

He had loved watching Taako lavish attention on his dick when it had happened before, had felt a little drunk on the sight and sensation of that beautiful mouth so rapturously delighted with what he had to offer, but there was something about not seeing that made every touch and twitch and shuddering breath twice as acute, twice as intoxicating.

The movements of his wet tongue, tracing shapes with the tip or broad lines with the flat; the motions of his hands, sometimes stroking, sometimes still except for the involuntary jump of his fingertips against Brad’s shaft as he lost himself to pleasure; the sounds he made, easy shrieks and high whines that flew from his mouth like twittering birds or low, trembling moans and choked gasps that seemed to tear themselves out of him.

When Taako’s hands and mouth left his dick, he wasn’t in an appropriate headspace to wonder why: the only thought he had was barely a thought at all, just a nearly incoherent longing to be somewhere _deeper_ , somewhere he remembered as being _hot_ and _perfect_ and so tight it had made it hard for him to think, to make real again those sensations that time had faded into beautiful memories and descriptive turns of phrase that couldn’t come close to capturing the ecstasy he knew he’d felt.

He wasn’t thinking about anything but that when he opened his eyes to see what was brushing past his fingers where they were still gripping the soft flesh of Taako’s ass, and he certainly didn’t stop when he realized what he was seeing.

Taako’s finger drew circles around his asshole, leaving a soft trail of something with a wet sheen. His hips rocked unevenly against Brad’s face as he did it.

 When that finger pressed in, disappearing to the first knuckle, the groan it drew out of Brad felt like it had come from deep inside his chest.

“You cool with this?” Taako panted, which Brad would consider a little belated when he thought about it later, but only registered as a question in the moment after Taako repeated it twice. “-ey, seriously, you cool if I do this, my dude?” He was still pistoning his finger in and out of his asshole in quick, sharp motions.

Words were, in that particular moment, a little beyond Brad.

He opted instead to stop holding Taako’s balls away from his face and palm his other ass cheek, giving both a hard squeeze and pulling them apart as he rumbled his assent with another low groan. The dick in his mouth pulsed and jumped.

Taako yelped, the rhythm of his finger stuttering. “I’m gonna,” he panted, “I’m just gonna take that as a yeah? Yeah. Oh _fuck_ , Brad, you really can suck a dick, _huh?_ ” Brad watched his finger slide in further, to the next knuckle, and then all the way in. He was so hard he could feel his pulse in the ache between his legs.

When Taako’s other hand found its way back to his dick, he moaned. When Taako’s mouth found its way back, he dug his fingers into Taako’s ass hard enough to bruise, as he’d discover later.

Taako pushed a second finger in and Brad could see how tight he was as he did, as his hips rocked in tiny movements, his body trying to fuck itself back on his fingers and down into Brad’s face. Taako’s mouth was so hot and wet and tight that his empty mind could barely differentiate what he was feeling from what he was seeing, except that it wasn’t _deeper_ , and what little of his brain was working was very insistent that the place those fingers were thrusting into _was_.

When that third finger pressed into that tight place and Taako’s fast, fervent sucking faltered with a needy whine he felt as he much heard, the little bit of Brad’s brain that was working threw up a desperate warning sign.

It was almost agony to tear himself away from that delirious pleasure, and he didn’t even really understand why he had to, but he still let go Taako’s ass to pull his mouth away from his dick, hating the confused little whine of protest it provoked.

It took him a moment to even conceive of why he’d done it. When his brain started to work again, however reluctantly, he pushed Taako up into an awkward crouch so he could speak.

“What’s- why are-” Taako was saying. Brad interrupted him.

“If you keep doing that, I’m going to come,” he panted. As his senses trickled back in, he realized that while he’d been cycling through fast and slow, alternating between teasing and pleasurable so as not to drive Taako over the edge, Taako had been demonstrating no such method or restraint.

Brad’s balls ached in protest.

“If you keep doing that, I’m going to come,” he repeated, more firmly. Taako was nuzzling his erection hopefully, clearly distracted. Brad hissed in a breath between his teeth as he felt a tongue dart teasingly over the head of his dick. “Taako, do you or do you not want to have sex with me?”

Taako made a petulant sound, one hand loosely gripping the shaft of Brad’s erection. His dick was twitching against Brad’s cheek.

“Taako-” Brad started again.

“Yeah! Yeah,” Taako snapped, sounding both fucked out and a little sulky, “Yeah, I want to fuck you. Of course. _Fuck,_ ” he swore, shifting restlessly. “You just have such a nice, thick, _suckable_ dick, my dude, you can’t just put it right in front of my face and then expect me not to suck it,” he complained.

“I think right now I might have to,” Brad told him apologetically, “or the only thing I’m going to be able to offer you is my fingers, Taako.”

Taako whined.

“If you’re okay with that, by all means,” Brad said, sympathetic to the conflict he seemed to be feeling: on one hand, his dick was very ready for Taako to get right back to sucking it, but on the other, he knew that a little patience could bring him an even sweeter taste of bliss. It was taking Brad a lot of willpower not to guide Taako’s mouth back down and let him soothe that throbbing ache.

Taako grumbled unintelligibly and then shoved something into his hand. When he brought it up to his face, Brad realized it was a bottle of lubricant.

“Get fucking _going_ ¸ Bradson, don’t make me wait longer than I have to,” Taako ordered, withdrawing his fingers and splaying them over his asshole in a v-shape. “There’s only so long you can expect me to-”

Whatever he was saying turned into a strangled whine as Brad pushed the first of his wet fingers in, wanting to hurry, careful to be slow. His dick ached in answer, pulsing as the tight heat of Taako’s asshole pressed close around his knuckle. He guided Taako’s dick back into his mouth.

He could feel Taako’s breath on his dick as he spoke.

“Do you have _any_ idea how fucking badly I have want to get this prime orc dick in my ass to not just fucking _go_ for it when it’s this easy, Brad?” Taako needled, sounding breathless and desperate and almost angry. “ _Cha boy_ isn’t exactly known for his self-restrai-”

He cut himself off with a moan that was nearly a shriek when Brad started working his finger in and out in long, rhythmic thrusts.

“Do you have _any_ ,” Taako panted, “ _fucking_ ,” he stopped, making a soft choking noise when Brad started pressing the tip of his second finger in, “ _idea_ how often I think about this dick, Brad? This dick right fucking _here_ , that I’m not allowed to touch right now, _I guess_?”

When Brad started thrusting both fingers into Taako’s ass, it was far less gentle than it should’ve been, and he didn’t wait as long as he ordinarily would’ve considered responsible before beginning to work his third finger in. Taako moaned, long and high. His sharp fingernails were digging into Brad’s thighs, hard, but not hard enough to be distracting in any meaningful way.

He had to keep convincing himself that third finger was necessary. It was a surprisingly hard sell, even knowing how tight Taako had still been after three of his fingers before.

“This big, gorgeous _dick_ ,” Taako croaked, “right fucking here, fucking _begging_ me to suck it, Brad-” He made an impossibly high noise as Brad began to piston all three of his fingers in and out of his ass.

Brad stopped literally the exact moment he stopped being absolutely sure Taako wasn’t ready, and, in a move he’d later decide was very rude and he wasn’t too proud of, lifted Taako off of his face and threw him bodily onto his back on the bed.

Taako barely had time to shriek with surprise before Brad was on him, kissing him desperately, hands roving and rougher than he meant them to be. “Please,” he begged, “please, in Luthic’s name, for every fucking _god_ , Taako, please tell me you’re ready-”

“Yes, fuck, hurry up and _fuck_ me,” Taako demanded. His fingernails were drawing stinging lines on Brad’s shoulder blades.

Brad went for the lube, started coating himself, and stopped. “We don’t have a-”

“Fuck it, just _fuck it_ , _fuck me-_ ”

In the second move of the evening Brad would later decide he wasn’t terribly proud of, he obliged.

Pushing even just the head of his dick into Taako’s ass was euphoric. The scramble of Taako’s nails against his back was sweet fire. Taako’s wild gasp and torrent of breathless curses were the music of heaven.

He had to stop himself. He was shaking.

Taako was clawing at him desperately, hips rocking. “Don’t _stop_ , don’t fucking _stop_ -”

“If I don’t, I am absolutely going to hurt you,” Brad said. His own voice sounded weird and distant. “A lot.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to think about anything but the tight, perfect heat he was trying not to push all the way into. “Taako, what do you think would happen if I just… all the way, right now,” he said longingly, “all the way into you, Taako. You’re so _small._ ” He made eye contact with Taako as he said, but it was more a reminder to himself.

Taako made a soft, pained noise, but stopped rutting down on his dick quite so urgently.

“We’re going to stay like this for a second,” Brad told Taako, or maybe himself. He honestly wasn’t sure.

When he started moving again, it wasn’t much better. He couldn’t remember feeling so desperate the first time. He wondered if something had changed, or if he’d just forgotten, somehow.

 _Ah_ , he thought, watching himself disappear into Taako, so slow it was agonizing. He knew.

The first time he hadn’t been sure it would work at all. He’d hoped it would, had wanted very badly for it to work, but hadn’t invested himself in it working. He remembered the exact moment Taako’s ass had finally sat flush against his hips with such vivid clarity partially because it had been such a surprise to him.

He didn’t have that uncertainty anymore.

He _knew_ Taako could take him, could take him right to the hilt, had seemed to _love_ taking him, and the knowing was making the slow buildup torturous.

He closed his eyes again. Not seeing how much further he had to go would help, maybe. Taako’s nails were digging stinging crescents into his back. Taako was making urgent little mewling sounds close to his ear.

“Gods, I just want to pound you,” he muttered, and for a moment, he didn’t understand Taako’s confused little,

“…What?”

“I want to pound you,” he said again, this time in Common, and leaned forward to kiss Taako hard. “You don’t know how hard it is not to,” he mumbled against his lips.

One of Taako’s palms slapped down on his shoulder reprovingly. “Fuck _you_ , Brad, you think I don’t want that too?” he complained, voice high with indignation and breathy with want. “How much I wish it wouldn’t like… maybe actually fucking _break_ me if you were to just fold me in half and wreck my ass right now?”

Brad groaned, resting his forehead on the bed above Taako’s head. “You’re not helping, Taako,” he said tightly.

Taako’s legs wrapped clumsily around his waist. One of his heels was tapping impatiently against his back. Brad could hear the musical note of malice in his voice and knew Taako was taking his frustration out on him again, just let he had been when Brad had told him to stop blowing him. Knowing didn’t help. “Do you know how _bad_ , Brad, how fucking bad I wish you could just ram into me and pound me until I can’t fucking think? Do you know how bad I want that, _Brad_?” His hands had moved from clawing at Brad’s shoulders to running down his arms appreciatively.

Brad opened his eyes, caught a split-second of Taako’s flushed face, kiss-darkened lips, and hard, resentful stare, and closed them again.  

“You are _really_ not helping, Taako,” he warned.

Taako’s nails dragged long lines into his chest. “ _Good,_ ” Taako seethed.

Brad tried to push in further, and found there was no further to go. Taako’s soft ass pressed invitingly against him. Everything was tight and hot and _deep_ and perfect.

“Oh, thank Luthic,” he groaned, and didn’t even bother translating that into Common for Taako’s benefit before pulling back and thrusting back in, setting a pace that was still slower than he’d have liked, but better than the slow breach he’d already endured.

Taako’s acidic, foul-mouthed taunting cut off with a sharp gasp.

Brad kissed him again, too wound up to be gentle. “You have to tell me if I’m hurting you,” he said urgently, pushing Taako’s hair out of his face to get a better idea of if he was.

Taako looked like he was experiencing a lot of things, but pain wasn’t one of them. His hands wandered aimlessly over Brad’s chest before reaching up to bury themselves in his hair. “How are you so fucking _big_?” he whined, voice cracking mid-word. “You’re- it’s- you’re just so _fffucking_ _big_ -”

“Sorry,” Brad mumbled, forcing himself to slow as he kissed Taako’s exposed throat apologetically.

Taako yanked on his hair in a way that suggested this had been the wrong answer. His eyes seemed unfocused, but his stare was intense. “No, I _love_ it,” he said throatily, arching up off the bed to wrap his arms around Brad’s neck, “I love how fucking _big_ you are, Brad, how all of you is _so_ fucking _big_ , I love how big your dick is and how big your hands are and how easy it is for you to fucking _throw_ me around if you want to-”

Brad kissed him roughly, grabbing his thighs and pushing them back so Taako’s knees pressed into the bed above his shoulders. “Is this okay?” he murmured.

“Yuh- _huh_ ,” Taako answered, and then wailed as Brad started moving more purposefully, slow at first, then faster. The sound it made every time his hips slapped against Taako’s ass seemed incredibly loud. Taako’s voice seemed even louder.

He was so _hot_ , so _tight_ , so _deep_.

“Gods,” he gasped, “Taako, I wish you knew what it felt like to be inside you-”

Taako just whined high in his throat, back arching and hands clutching.

“You’re so good, Taako, you’re fucking incredible-” Brad told him. The knot of tension winding steadily between his legs was becoming impossible to ignore.

Something a little more aware flitted across Taako’s vague and ecstatic expression. “Come for me,” he gasped, and the repeated it like a demand. “I want to feel it, I want to feel you blow inside me, so _come for me_ ,” Taako demanded, and it was, at that point, impossible not to oblige him.

The first pulse of it was bone-quaking relief, the second incredible pleasure.

On the third, he felt that _tightness_ , that hot, deep, perfect place he’d buried himself in, tighten sharply around him as Taako tensed and gasped, and everything got a little surreal.

He was still coming, that much he knew, but the sudden tight grip on him had prevented it from crashing over him like he was used to, and time started to stretch out in either direction like he’d stepped wrong and slipped into another plane. There was heat and pleasure and pressure and time had stopped so completely he couldn’t decide if he’d invented it.

All he could see was pure, unblemished white.

When he finally stopped coming and time reasserted itself and colours started to seep back into his vision, he realized he was shaking uncontrollably.

Taako was panting.

“Are you okay?” he croaked, sounding utterly wrecked but still concerned, in a vague, uncomprehending way. “Things got kind of weird there for a minute.”

“I think so,” Brad said distantly. He was still shaking. “I think so.”

One of Taako’s hands patted him clumsily on the cheek. His eyebrows were starting to knit together. “Seriously, are you okay, my dude?”

“Yeah,” Brad told him again, wondering how long it was going to take for Taako’s skin to go back to looking as blue as it was supposed to. “Why?”

The awareness was definitely creeping back into Taako’s fucked-out expression at a rate he might’ve found alarming if he weren’t so foggy himself.

“Some of your hair went kinda… white,” Taako told him.

Brad shook his head. He felt like his brain was crashing against the walls of his skull as he did it. “It was already like that.”

“No,” Taako said slowly, “not like this, my dude.” He pulled forward a long section of hair to show him.

Brad squinted at it, at first thinking that his eyes were still faded in that strange way and then realizing the hand that was holding it _was_ as blue as it was supposed to be.

The piece of hair Taako was holding just looked grey because it was brindled with white hairs.

It looked like the hair at his temples did when he pulled his hair back.

But that was impossible, because the hair at his temples was going grey because it was growing out of a head that was getting old: the hair in Taako’s hand should’ve been pure black, because it’d been grown by a much younger orc.

He squinted at it and then decided he didn’t care.

“It’s probably nothing,” he said dismissively, and Taako gave him a disbelieving look. “I need to move, but there’s going to be a mess.”

Taako laughed. “I can deal with it later,” he mumbled, still playing with Brad’s hair. “Cha boy’s still kinda freaked out about-”

Brad looked at him. “I’m not joking, Taako- there’s going to be a mess.”

Taako’s grin faded. “My dude, isn’t that- that’s just a stereotype.”

Brad grimaced apologetically. “There are a lot of myths about orcs,” he told him, “That isn’t one.”

“Oh,” Taako said, “okay. Y’know, Brad, I can’t decide if that’s kind of hot or just really gross, or if I’m fucking gross for thinking it might be hot,” he mused, “but I really don’t want to explain how I ruin our sheets to my boyfriend if the reason is a _metric fuckton_ of orc jizz, so I guess we just live here now. Thoughts?”

Brad laughed despite himself. “I could probably carry you to the bathroom if I’m careful.”

“An orc with a plan. I like it,” Taako said approvingly, “okay, Taako’s with you. What do I do?”

“Hold tight,” Brad told him, and hugged him close, shifting off the bed and onto his feet very carefully. “Sorry, I should’ve warned you,” he murmured, “I shouldn’t have assumed you knew.”

Taako give him a sidelong look. “We’ll call this one a learning experience. Okay, so turn left in the hall-”

***

After they’d both cleaned themselves up and Taako had finally stopped trying to call Brad on the way he was steadfastly pretending nothing was strange about the sudden proliferation of grey hair in his ponytail, Brad walked Taako back to the bedroom and started looking for his clothes.

“Oh,” Taako said, voice light but a little odd. “So this is payback, then, I guess.”

Brad looked at him, puzzled, pants in one hand, hesitating with his fingers poised over his bracer.

“Because, y’know, I ditched you after we boned,” he said, shrugging like he didn’t care and reaching out to poke at Brad’s glasses with a finger. “I get it. That’s on me, I deserve that, Taako had that one coming.”

Brad looked between his pants and where Taako was sitting on the bed. “Do you… not want me to leave?”

“Did I _say_ I wanted you to leave, my man?” Taako countered, picking up Brad’s glasses from where they’d fallen off the headboard and peering through them.

“You didn’t say you wanted me to stay,” Brad pointed out.

Taako gave him a sullen look. “Are you gonna make me?”

Brad considered it for long enough to make Taako scowl openly at him. “No, but it’s hard to know what you want if you don’t tell me,” he told Taako. “I can’t read minds- that’s not a spell I ever learned.”

Taako folded Brad’s glasses and put them back on the headboard. “You could get back into bed and let me snooze on your dumb green ass the way you did to mine last time,” he said noncommittally.

Brad had to fight to suppress a smile. “Elves don’t sleep,” he reminded. “Are you asking me to cuddle you while you meditate, Taako?” There was something oddly charming about the idea.

Taako went distinctly purple. “And?” he asked, lifting his chin challengingly.

Brad couldn’t prevent his grin from spreading. “I’m fine with that,” he said cheerfully, pulling back the covers, and Taako scowled self-consciously at him.

Taako’s skin had gone cool again, but not in a way that was unpleasant. He fit himself into Brad’s arms and against his chest with a soft fluidity that made it feel natural for him to be there.

Brad stroked his hair, wondering at the worlds of difference between this Taako and the one that had thrown himself off the moon to escape embarrassment and the one that had saved the universe.

The strangest thing, he thought, was that time was starting to cohere those distinct images of Taako he had into one very strange but not unlikable whole.

The Taako who was an incredibly powerful wizard and hero was also the Taako who couldn’t seem to say what he wanted without building a labyrinth to house the words in, and that Taako was also the Taako who could spew a slew of filthy wants with reckless abandon when he wasn’t getting his way.

This Taako was that Taako, he marveled.

This Taako, already slipped away into something not quite like sleep, fingers twitching against Brad’s chest, eyes flickering under his eyelids.

Brad watched him, and marveled, and eventually dozed off, even though it was only the middle of the night.

***

**Author's Note:**

> Trivia:
> 
> \- The item Brad is bringing back is Taako's hat. He forgot it under Brad's bed. CONTINUITY SLAM DUNK.  
> \- While sex can come in many forms and they are all valid, non-penetrative or otherwise, when Brad asks “Taako, do you or do you not want to have sex with me?” he is specifically referring to penetrative anal sex. This is not intended to indicate that sex must be penetrative. You do you and you do the folks you like to do in the ways you like to do them.  
> \- Luthic does as she likes. Gods in general are pretty weird. There's no canon basis for the hair things, it happened while I was in a porn-writing fugue. Two hours of my life are gone.  
> \- Yes, I am absolutely poking fun at orc porn that involves unholy amounts of jizz. Lovingly. It just seems really messy and inconvenient imo
> 
> This has been Nah, here for all your weird, goofy novella-length porn needs.


End file.
